Search form

Search form

South Carolina hospitals are working together to prevent future health care-acquired infections through the use of an automated infection-monitoring tool from the Premier health care alliance. The company will provide a portal through which hospitals can research HAIs and compare their improvement over time against state and national benchmarks.

U.S. doctors have been slower than those in other industrialized countries to adopt health care information technology, according to a survey by the Commonwealth Fund of seven such nations. Physicians who use HIT said they feel better prepared to deal with chronic health issues.

UnitedHealth Group has updated its health care ID cards to provide access to patient PHRs and process health care transactions. UnitedHealth Group is the first nationwide insurance company to obey newly introduced national standards that require the cards to have a swipeable magnetic strip, among other readability features.

President Barack Obama's plan to invest $25 billion in health care IT initiatives could cause a technological gap between large and small health care operations and affect the country's quality of care, according to participants at the 2009 Health Information Technology Conference of the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium. Instead of giving providers incentive money for complying with health IT requirements, one expert suggested the funds go to help link regional health IT extension centers that exchange data and work to improve quality of care.

CareTools has created iChart, an iPhone application that allows physicians to access and utilize many EMR functionalities through their smartphones. The $139.99 CCHIT-compliant application offers electronic billing and prescribing, as well as an interface that works with Allscripts products.